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CNET First Look

Pebble Time Steel smartwatch pumps up battery life for an extra $50

Pebble's smartwatches have some unique advantages over the Apple Watch and Android Wear, battery life in particular. The Steel lasts up to 10 days, but here's why we weren't totally in love with it.

2:41 / August 7, 2015

Transcript

[MUSIC]
Want something different in a Smart Watch?
I've got the Pebble Time Steel on my wrist.
Pebble offers something different to the equation then Apple Watch and Android Ware because it feels a little more like a watch.
What do I like about the latest version that's gonna be available soon for $300, this Battery life, battery life, battery life!
This thing gets up to an estimated ten days of battery life between charges, the Pebble Time, which costs $100 less, gets seven days.
The Apple watch gets about a day, Android wear a day or two.
So you don't have to worry.
You can just charge this and keep going, and sleep with it, and use some of the fitness apps like the misfit app for sleep tracking.
Always on, this display is reflective so you can use it in bright daylight, the screen's always on like a digital watch.
It is very easy to read.
It has a backlight.
At night it gets a little bit washed out, looks more like a Gameboy with backlighting, but the fact that you can always peak at your wrist Big plus.
Funky watch faces.
There are so many weird little fan made and make your own watch base tools that Pebble has on its store almost all for free and you can play around with these weird digital ones, strange weather ones, little homemade apps and keep yourself occupied.
The Pebble time and Pebble time steal and store dozens of these apps.
On your watch at any time.
What I don't like it's design is [UNKNOWN] it doesn't really catch your eye.
People may think you're wearing an Apple watch.
It doesn't look as nice though as opposed to the original Pebble steel which came out about a year and a half ago.
Had a really stand out retro steel look.
This one compared to the pebble time that's $100 less Eh, it doesn't really look like it adds a lot to the equation.
The Pebble Time Steel comes with a leather band that looks eh, so, so.
But it will also have a steel link band that steps up the looks, we don't have that yet.
And you can swap the bands out pretty easily with a bunch of other options.
Price, it's kinda expensive.
$300 for this.
You can get a Apple watch starting at $350 and nearly any Android Ware watch.
For that price or less.
And it's kind of low-tech.
This thing does get messages via blue tooth and it does run some fitness tracking [UNKNOWN] but it doesn't have heart rate tracking, it doesn't have nearly the level of technical finesse that apple watch or [UNKNOWN] does.
You can not make phone calls with it.
However if you have an android phone you can use the built in microphone to dictate response to messages.
I love that the Pebble Time Steel feels more like a watch that you don't have to worry about.
I just don't know if I'd pay $300 for it.
I'm Scott Stein at CNET with the Pebble Time Steel.
[NOISE]

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